We are about to alter game mechanics a bit to meet some issues that we feel are the most concerning. It would be great if some of you shared your thoughts on how things could be ironed out the best way. There has been a request like this before (I guess luckymustard is already looking it up to post a link so please dont hesitate to quote the essence of previous discussions.

Lets start by identifying the most important issues :

I) The Battleship is to strong. Too often games boil down to the question who has got the most Battleships.

II) Airborn units are way to weak. AntiAir units counter then far too good. Airborn units also have to retreat if ships are in sight.

III) The interaction between Planes, Ships and Land units needs improvement. Currently there is no costeffective way to stop ships from laying waste to every land unit in range.

IV) Light artillery is of no use.

Even though there are some smaller isseus that we want to adress these are the 4 main issues that need to be tweaked.

Solution to (I):

Battleships stay at 2000 credits but their defence value is reduced a bit and their attack power vs airborn units is reduced a lot. Bombers get heavier impact vs ships. Subs are allowed to shoot 2 fields. Destroyers altered to become more cost efficient. (In comparison to the BS). See further below for more details on the Destroyer.

Solution to (II):

The bomber will be availale for 800 credits and have a slightly increased attack vs ships and most units will get their attack strength vs air units reduced. The airdefence unit will become a lot weaker and get its firing range reduced to 2 fields. Credit cost is reduced to 300.

Helicopters will be a bit stronger vs Troopers.

Airborn units will be allowed to repair on repair patches and on airfields where they repair 5 units.

Solution to (III):

As we decrease the impact on airborn units for most units their survivability will increase. The airdefence unit will become less effective and will not defend as much of the battlefield anymore. We hope to see more airdefence units (which take up space) and thereby making it a bit more difficult to prevent airstrikes. Reducing the Attackrange from 3 to 2 will make it a lot easier for Bombers to do their jobs and fly away safely.

Concerning the interaction between ships and land units: We are playing with the idea to introduce a pioneer trooper or an supply truck that can issue a "Fortify" command. If done so the (lets say) Trooper will create one of three types of a Bunkers. The Bunkers would be well armored but not as heavy as a heavy tank. They would provide medicore firepower vs one unit type and none vs the other two. The Pioneer unit would be 150 Credits and the Creation of the bunker would range from 450 to 600 credits

Bunker Types:

Fortified coast cannon - 600 credits - Destroyer firepower with a range of 4.

AntiAir Cannon - 450 Credits - Low Defence value - Firepower of Two airdefences (with one attack)

Anti Tank Cannon - Somewhere between normal and heavy tank. Values still to be decided.

About the Destroyer:

We think the destroyer is to weak compared to the Battleship. There are two options we'd like to discuss:

1) Credits: 900 - All other values stay about the same.

2) Credits 1250 - Will be allowed to fire twice (like theBattleship) - All other values stay about the same.

Both ways we'd like to increase the attack value vs airborn units slightly.

Finally I'd like emphasize that we not 100% sure about all things mentioned here. There will surely be a closely monitored testing. Discussion and suggestions are very welcome.

IV) ?

i'd have to guess that there's no solution to IV)... except the non-solution of  -  don't play with the heavier artillery.  but i also lean towards the idea that someone here might come up with a possible real solution.

oh, and i can't look up the past threads now... leaving from work.  maybe in a couple hours... or even later in the weekend or early next week. 

• I)
• If you make the bomber cheaper you shouldn't increase the attack strength of it especially if the battleship defense is reduced for example to 14.
• If the sub attack range is 1-2 which is a good thing imo, the destroyer attack range against subs should not be lower, because the destroyers are also a counter unit against subs.
• I think it would be better if the destroyer can fire twice to break through sub lines and stalemates. I am not sure about the 1250 as the destroyer price. I think something between 1300 and 1400 might be better because the destroyer will remains a sub counter and will become even better in this function with 2 shots. I suggest to reduce the destroyer attack against boats by the same value the battleship defense will be reduced in order to make them still weak against battleships.
• II)
• There should remain units which are good against air and ground units , for example the assault artillery and maybe the heavy trooper. I have my doubts if the range of the anti air should be reduced especially since other units will get a lower damage against air. If the range will and price will be reduced the damage should stay the same. Otherwise i doubt this units will be build a lot.
• I think 800 is a little to low for a bomber, especially if it is stronger against naval and land units. I suggest to put it at 900. Another idea would be to put it at 1100 and give the bomber an attack range of 1-2 or increase it to 1400 and give the bomber the ability to fire twice. With the bomber getting cheaper the heli and the jet should get a little cheaper to. I suggest 550/550 for the heli and 700/750 for the jet by 800/900 (or 1200 with 1-2 range or 1400 with 2 attacks) for the bomber.
• I am not sure if the heli needs a stronger attack against troopers since it is already at 14 and as strong as the bomber or the berserker and can kill a capturing trooper with one shot with luck.
• III) The idea with the bunkers sounds interesting but might lead so stalemates. I suggest to give an unfortify option so that you can move the unit again and place it somewhere else. Another fortify for the same tower shouldn't cost money or only a little. Fortify and unfortify should both cost a whole turn. If they still come in i suggest the following:
• Can the Fortified coast cannon attack subs at a range of 4 also? I suggest a range of 3 vs subs, so that they are useful against them. I suggest the cannon should be able to fire twice, because if it can only fire at ships its very vulnerable and battleships have a longer range. and with 750 total cost its not that cheap. if it doesn't fire twice it should be cheaper. otherwise better build the heavy art. If it would fire twice better change the total price to 900.
• The problem with a high damage is that the air unit might survive a shot of the anti air cannon, but normally not 2 shots of anti air guns. The anti air cannon should therefore fire twice also because with 600 costs and low defense and being immmobile its not worth the money. The 2 attacks can be comparable to the anti air in damage. That should kill any aircraft.
• I assume the Anti Tank cannon can only fire against hard, so just inf can attack it. So it should either have a good range to get  enemy artillery and/or fire twice or be very cheap. I suggest to give the unit a firepower of 10 against hard (like heavy art) with a range of 1-3 and the ability to fire twice. With a defense of 12 this unit can come at 400 credits, since  it is very vulnerable to hovers, heavy art, dfa, naval - and air units and not mobile.
2008-03-21 14:35:59.0

• IV) I suggest to give the light art a range of 2-4 and lower the attack to 6 against hard, speedboat, amphibic and boat. This way it could be used as a heavy art counter and is ok against troopers but a little weaker against other land units.
2008-03-21 14:39:22.0

I'm glad we're finally back on unit balancing. It's been far too long however I'm glad we have the map editor now.

I'm a bit swamped with things to do right now so I'll post my suggestions later today.

Short side note: interesting pioneer unit but I think it would cause more stalemate problems than solving anything. Sorry but I'm against the idea. I think before we start adding anymore new units we should balance the ones we have right now.

Well what to start with...

I personally love the BS though I guess you could typically say that I am the one with the most more often then not.  However, I do recognize that they are very powerful.  There do need to be more threats to them.  I think lowering their defense is one factor but I think you should be careful.  Too low and they are no longer worth their 2k price tag.

I think boosting the boat damage of certain land units like DFAs and HAs may help though they should by no means out damage a BS.  The fact though that the defense of the BS will be siginificantly higher then the DFA though should help balance the cost between the two.

Air power.  I think the bomber should be able to do significantly more damage then currently against BS.  However, the cost balance/damage output should still be addressed.  A single bomber should not be able to nullify a BS.  Two bombers should seriously cripple one though with excellent rolls destorying it.  To protect your BS, you should use the destoryer (more on that later).  Limiting the anti-air to 2 spaces makes me nervous but I can see your reasoning behind it.  Can artillery still hit air units?  If not then you may never catch a bomber...

Also, to help air units in general.  Make it where they take no damage in attacking.  Ships and artillery rule the field because they take no damage when attacking land units.  Nothing slows them down per round.  Allow air units to do the same and they will become much more dangerous.  Only difference on attacking and damage should take place with anti-air, other air units, and boats.  Air units are dangerous to use since they take damage when they attack, typically can not escape once they do, and then must return all the way to an airport to repair.  Making the change, means you have to catch them and box them in with anti-air and artillery/boats.  Possible with the ranges of the DFAs and BS.  At least something to consider.

Destoryers.   Make them anti-air to combat the increased power of the bomber.  Giving them two attacks may be too much against subs though.  They are already the anti-sub and cheaper.  Allowing one to completely destory a sub in one round is too extreme.  Increasing their range of attack while giving them a movement of 4 may be a little much.  I suggest you define their role and then determine their range/movement.  They already move faster then subs, twice as fast as BS.  You would make the destoryer the new king of the seas.  Personally, I rather see you give more utility to them in making them anti-air, anti-sub, keeping their range to 3, only one attack, lower cost to 900.

Also consider returning the number of BS attacks back to only one.  Perhaps lowering their cost a little (1800) to reflect the change.  The two attacks a round destorys anything in a single turn.  Multiple BS turns the battlefield into a waste land.  This will help balance BS a lot without a lot of manipulation of air unit powers or anything else.

Subs.  Keep them as they are.  Giving them range while nothing can hit them from range doesn't sound good in my book.  I like their current role and dynmaic now.  I see no reason to change it or make them more powerful.

I think one reason for lack of land, air, and sea involvement is because of the difference in cost effectiveness of the sea.  I suggest scaling back sea power in general (see reducing BS attacks).  Honestly, I think you should look to keep most units costing around 600-900.  Max of 1200-1500.  Then balance from there.  Also, keep it simple!!!!  One of the biggest draws to this game is that the game is so easy to pick up and play.  Takes a long time to master but it is simple in design and play.  Keep it that way.  Adding multiple attacks and crazy costs and rules only makes the game more complicated and takes away from one of its biggest virtues.

Last bunkers, I hate the idea of them.  The game is already very defensive in general.  A good defense may not win a game but it sure doesn't lose it.

Sorry, kinda rambling.

Redwarrior

Light artillery, lower their cost more.  Currently 400?  Make them 300.  Or even 250.  Make them cheap since they are so easily outranged.  Make them a viable early round arillery selection.  Only problem is they may have little no use late round.  Only way to fix that is to increase their range.

Redwarrior

IV) I have two suggestions.

a)I think the quick way to improve light artillery would be to allow them to move and shoot.

b) The better way (but harder)rename them to mortar team and make them look like a trooper with a mortar.  That way they could hide in mountains and be better protected by trees.

V) Something else I'd like to see is for Heavy troopers to have an attack range of two vs. hard units.  Otherwise what use are the rockets?

I haven't played hundreds of games so I don't have a huge history to
base my opinion on, but I honestly don't find any major problems with
unit balance. In fact, I think unit balance might have more to do
with map design than the unit stats themselves.

In certain maps, certain units tend to be more powerful than they
might be on other maps. Depending on terrain, openness, proximity of
key places to water, and a myriad of other map design qualities the
effectiveness of a unit can be a huge swing.

This isn't to suggest that some unit tweaking might not improve
certain aspects of game play, but more to highlight that I don't
think unit balance is necessarily a cut and dried foregone conclusion
that unit X is too powerful or unit Y is too weak.

I like all of bert's suggestions.  here are a few comments though:

- I think it will be good to decrease the battleship defense, but not by too much... just enough so that it can definitely be killed by two subs in one turn.  I think it would be more important to decrease attack strength.  So, keep the two shots per turn, but let each shot be about the same strength as a heavy artillery.  So, you basically have a 2x heavy artillery = 1200 credits, leaving 800 extra credits which is worth the ability to shoot twice, and repair two hit points per turn.

- about aircraft, I think most of your suggestions are good, but I'll offer one more that will make them more effective, and that is that you should be able to move and repair in the same turn (provided that you make it to an air base).  Repairing can be tedious when the number of air bases is limited and you have to move a unit there and then wait a whole turn to repair it.

- I think that fixing light artillery can be as simple as reducing it's cost down to 300 credits.  It is not "half effective" as a heavy artillery as that cost would imply, but the damage it does to armored units is not much more than the repair rate which does make it in reality half as effective.

Above all the best way to try these out is to just try and start hacking away.  I am opposed to introducing new units until people are satisfied with the current unit setup.  Fixing one problem is easier than fixing two that are dependent on each other.
 

Battleships
They should have a reduced range against airunits. They should be like artillery against landunits and like AntiAir against Air, or even have range 1 against air.
They should be more vulnerable against Airattacks, so if somebody has sea dominance (read: more battleships), they still might have a chance with an airforce.

Submarines
They should not be blocked (get Zoc) by hovercrafts, speedboats or battleships. If there is a free field behind such enemy unit and within range, they should be able to move there. Subs can 'submerge'...
This will make them much more dangerous to battleships.

Destroyers
Their job should be to protect the fleet against subs and airattacks. When they attack subs, they should be able to really damage them without getting damaged alot itself. When attacked by a sub though, they are more vulnerable?
If destroyers act like Anitair against air, that would be ok.

Bombers
Bombers fly on high altitude and should not be able to get damaged or blocked by any landunit. Maybe they should not even be damaged by antiair, or much less then? Two jets can bring them down though. Further they should be able to do 'carpet bombing'. This means there is collateral damage in all adjacent hexes, especially against infantry. Bombers will become very usefull then against 'floods of infantry' then.

AntiAir
I wouldn't change the AntiAir, accept against bombers. Bombers should be able to severely damage AA? This makes the use of bombers larger and also makes you need to buy more AA.
I think limitting the range of AA will decrease their use. Why would you buy more of a unit that is less capable? Because jets can move 2 after attacking, AA really need to have a range of 3.

Light artillery
Making the LA cheaper would be good. I sometimes use buying LA against HA, because two LA can kill one HA and both survive and be repaired. This only works when there are little HA otherwise they might be outranged.
But Increasing the range would be a solution too.
Making them more effective against infantry (killing them in one shot?) and HA more effective against Hard units, might also help.

New Units
Rather no new units. First balance the current ones more.

First, good call addressing the unit balance. Thats the right thing to do after we now have the mapeditor.
I like almost all of the ideas bert presented and I think its clear the devs put enough thaught into this.

I) berts solution is best. make them weaker vs air, but dont decrease the power of their attacks against the rest. Subs having a range of two is the most important suggestion here. BBs need to learn to fear Bombers and subs. Thats the right direction to go.

II) again,like all of berts points. just ... if air forces become much stronger, 800 might be too cheap for a bomber. 1000 sounds fair. I like the other idea mantionned to allow air units to repair after they moved to an airfield. However, the other changes are more important. If they repair by 5, then repairing might be less of a hassle.

III) Dont like the idea of the pioneer trooper that much. Its hard to forsee what other issues that will open up in turn. Introduce new units later, indepoendant of solving balancing issues

IV) do one of the following: a) reduce their cost or b) let them move & attack

Destroyer) I prefer solution1: Credits: 900 - All other values stay about the same. I do like the unit as it is, just a little expencive. I think the double shot should remain a BB privilege only

IV) If the light artillery can move and shoot, what is the assault artillery good for?

ok assault art can attack aircraft but thats not so much difference especially on maps without air units

Assault is the only unit other than a BS who can start they turn outside of range of a DFA and still get in and attack it.

If the light artillery can move and shoot, then it can start outside of range of a DFA and still get in and attack it. (On grass, their movement is 3 tiles, max attack is 3 tiles. Assault arts' movement is 4, max attack 2.) Was this your point, winter?

So, if the light artillery can move and shoot, the only difference between light and assault arts are the small differences in movement range and attack range (and assault arts being able to fire at air units.), which I think is fine. This would certainly make light arts more appealing to build since they can counter heavy artilleries, but would that throw off the cost/effect balance of light and heavy arts? Possibly. Maybe light artilleries should have considerably weaker attack or defense in this case.

As for bert's suggestions, I like them, for the most part. I do not think we should introduce new units into the game yet.

(I) Sounds good. I like subs having range.

(II) How about keeping the bomber at its current price, increase its attack against ships and have it attack with a range of 1-2. I think they should be better able to escape damage when they attack, and I think the best way to do this is to add a little range. I think the anti-air unit should be slightly weaker, but maintain its current range, especially if the bomber has range of 1-2. I think cost is fine.

I rarely use helicopters. Stronger vs. troopers sounds good to me.

Air units repairing 5 on airfields and repair patches seems a bit much. I think 4 is fine. Alternatively, I like Pluto's idea of being able to move and then repair on the same turn. More specifically, since jets and bombers have a 2-step move, how about allowing one of those steps to be a repair? For example, allowing them to move 6 onto an airfield / repair patch, then repair, or move 6 then 2 onto an airfield / repair patch on one turn and the next turn, repair then move 2. This is an alternative to bert's idea, because allowing this move and repair  on the same turn with a bigger repair would make air units too powerful, in my opinion.

(III) Tweak current units first, add more units later. Good ideas though. =)

(IV) Two options I like for light artillery: Move and attack, or as jeye wrote, change range to 2-4 and make it have less attack against non-troopers.

My turn:

I agree with some of bert's suggestions and others mentioned in the previous posts. I will mainly reiterate those comments and a couple of mine.

Solution to (I): I like this the most. I've always advocated giving subs a 1-2 range. Basically what streen said. BS dont fear anything, not even subs. I've used groups of battleships to destroy subs.

Solution to (II): I think bombers just need to do more damage somehow. Their cost is find for me. They remind me of subs but without the firepower of subs. One suggestion (peter777 said) in weewar terms is to make bombers be ZOC free. Majority of the time I have to fly in circles or use a cleaning wave to provide a direct path to my target with a bomber. Anti-Air is fine, I do not think it needs reduction of any of its stats, especially if you increase a bombers damage capability. I find it cheaper to spam Heavy troopers, then building an anti-air unit. In fact the only time I use Anti-air is when the units were provided to be at the beginning of game. I never ever build them. Ships are the bane of aircraft, but again this can be corrected via Solution(I).

Helicopters will be a bit stronger vs Troopers. - they are fine, i think they feel weak cause they do not have the strafing ability of airplanes. Maybe giving them to ability to retreat 2. Move Attack Move.

Airborn units will be allowed to repair on repair patches and on airfields where they repair 5 units. -hmmm not sure about this. I remember last year when air units were first introduced. I agree with Pluto's suggestion allowing Air units to repair if they have their free extra move left. I play tested with this and i felt this balanced them good, and when the units were introduced to live servers and lost their ability they became useless except for jets.

III) Pioneer trooper is an interesting new unit and game mechanic, but we first need to balance existing units.

IV) Light artillery - maybe reducing their cost to 300 or increasing their damage capability, but if you give them the ability to move and then fire you just make Assualt Artillery useless. So I disagree with the move and fire ability. Back to attack. They can only make dents in raiders and barely any damage to L.tanks.

whew! that was long post.

>)

A winning strategy is to flood the battlefield with infantry. It would really be nice if there is some kind of counter measure against this. I think either the light artillery or the bomber (or both) could be used for that. If only they did collateral damage to a certain extend to nearby infantry units, that makes LA much more dangerous. For instance: the opponent attacks with lots of infantry and backup of his HA. With some LA in the 2nd defense line, the defender can damage the infantry, but still stay out of range from the HA. This means the attacker has to spread his infantry and mix it with more expensive units, and play more tactical.

I don't agree that much with the 2-range for subs. What bothers me much more is that speedboats and hovers have ZoC/can block submarines. How is that possible? A speedboat blocking a sub for crying out loud...
What happens is that people 'protect' their subs and BSs by putting a line of speedboats in front of them. Your subs cannot pass that line, or even attack the speedboats. Another tactic is to surround subs, destroyers and BSs with lots of cheap speedboats so they cannot move away anymore, and then get attacked. Gee, in which war did (lots of) speedboats determine the outcome of big seabattles? Aspecially with submarines involved.
Another way to solve this problem is to have subs blast away speedboats in one turn.

Maybe Bert can draw his own conclusions based on this discussion and come up with a list of concrete changes. Then we can give a last round of comment on those whether 'we can live with it' or not? It's just an idea.

Yeah, the blocking of subs by units that they can't attack bugged me too.

to the problem that there might be mass infantry flooting the battlefield, as a countermeasure i did suggest a sniper unit to counter it. the unit could only attack inf (att 8) has a defense of 4 and a range of 2-2 and can fire twice. price would be about 300 and movement would be 7. Also I think it is a good idea for units doing area damage, but i think there should be new units for area damage and not the current once changed to it (maybe except for the light art) , because for example the bomber fullfills a purpose of dealing high damage to a single ground unit which is quite useful. with area damage it would get more expensive  deal probably less damage and deal colateral damage to friendly units which are at the wrong position. I think it would be better with to come up with a new unit for succh a purpose which you could call nuclear bomber for example.

A nuclear bomber doing damage only to one unit + the units immediately around that unit would seem a little out of proportion with the devastation a nuke can wreak.

Maybe carpet bomber... or napalm... something with a large area of effect but on a smaller scale than a full on nuking.

I seldom use bombers, because they are very expensive and easily shot down.

Well, before I give my thoughts, I'd just like to say: Hallelujah to the Lord God Almighty that you've finally gotten around to spec balancing. It's been a long time coming, and though I've been excruciatingly exasperated about the delay(s), I am grateful for its eventual arrival.

I question the decision to weaken AA. IINM, AA (in real life) are rather fearsome to aircraft, and when there are enough of them, they make airspace too risky to travel into, or at least, not cost effective (AA ordnance being much cheaper than aircraft).

Further to this, I also question the move to weaken naval AA ability. IINM, battleships had their share of AA weaponry. I agree with peter777's suggestion to make them merely equivalent to AA units in AA firepower.

Another thing [which I mentioned in the past] is I think that AA need to exert ZOC on aircraft. This only makes sense if you consider what ZOC is supposed to represent with units in general. If AA don't exert ZOC on aircraft, then you would be on tenuous footing to argue that any other unit should exert any ZOC on any other unit. (And I do mean ZOC with the FULL extent of their attack range (2 or 3 hexes, or whatever you decide on), and not just 1 (adjacent) hex).)

This of course brings back what I've previously mentioned: There needs to be a full, complete and varied 2-dimensional table of what units exerts ZOC on what other units, and the ZOC range in hexen (per crossindex). Right now, I think this part of the game is essentially broken at the moment.

What I found bordered on the ridiculous is the ability of infantry to attack jets. I think they should have nearly nil offensive power against jets and bombers. Oh, and if artillery can hit aircraft, I think that should be taken out. I haven't played lately, so I don't know if this is the case right now or not.

Something I think worth testing out is making jets also effective against ground units, so it becomes an all-around killer. Of course, make them more expensive. But then bombers become a cheaper, more specialized unit, since they are weak against other aircraft (namely jets). I think this change would more accurately reflect reality, since I don't understand jets to be weak against any realm of air, ground, or naval. Further to this would be increasing jet attack range to something like 1-5 hexes. Redwarrior alludes to this when suggesting that winged air units should not experience much retaliation from enemy targets who don't have the wherewithall or range to shoot back.

Indeed naval units are perhaps too powerful against land units. I believe someone mentioned in the past that, in reality, naval craft were very ineffective against inland units and fortifications. As such, I think the effective domain of naval units should be restricted to enemy naval units and aircraft.

Bombers should indeed have much heavier impact against ships.

I shall weakly put forth that I think increasing sub range from 1 to a meagre 2 is insufficient, but I welcome the openness to experimentation in this regard. If it were up to me, I would start with a range of 2 minimum, 6 maximum (just as artillery have a min and max range). My justification here is that (as I've mentioned in the past) submarines don't mosey up to battleships to give them a kiss of death. Their modus operandi is to launch torpedoes from far away, then slip off to elude depth charges. Which brings to memory another thing I previously mentioned: naval surface craft should have great capacity to destroy submarines which are within, say, 1 hex. I'm implying here that depth charges would be in use. For this reason, I think that the BB and DD should not differ too much in anti-sub strength, since I don't see why one should carry more or less powerful depth charges than the other. Can someone please tell me why DDs should be considered anti-sub more than any other naval surface craft? The only reason I can think of at the moment (besides it being a totally arbitrary choice [which may not be an entirely bad thing in the context of a game]) is that DDs are cheaper and faster, and so you risk to lose less tonnage in trying to move to depth charge the sub.

Re: Redwarrior's comments on the sub: You can try to ensure subs don't get too powerful by ensuring they move slowly; say 2 hexes per turn. This way, destroyers can catch up with them and depth charge the living daylights out of them.

I don't have much comment at this point on the pioneer units, since it seems to me a bit of a wild thing to play with while unit balancing remains in its infancy. I will, however, say that some innovation and change is better than none at all, and so it (as is this whole thread) a breath of fresh air. I see, though, that many others also think we should stay away from unit creation at this point.

As for light artillery: I'm surprised folks find them so useless. I think their increased mobility make them good for countering heavy artillery, and for moving to and away from the front lines quicker than HA. If you want to make them more appealing, simply reduce the cost by 50 or 100.

Re: Redwarrior's unit cost comments: I've mentioned this in the past before, and agree that we should try experimenting with more levelled unit costs. Try something where income from one base is something like 10 or 15 credits. Then make units cost something like 100, 110, 115, 120, 150, etc. With only a few bases, there may be turns where you can't even afford to build anything. Then when you finally gather enough resources to actually produce, deciding what exactly to spend your precious money on becomes an important part of good tactics. Should I splurge now on the expensive unit, or buy the cheap one so that I am more financially empowered in a future turn? Right now, there is relatively little of that sort of pressure/decision-making in weewar, because many maps give so much income that you can afford to built many units per turn. Perhaps what is needed is to give map-makers the ability set unit cost as well as income rate. Then it becomes out of the dev's hands to a great extent.

I like winter's mortar team idea! Would be worth playtesting, I think. Though I'm not sure whether you can fire mortars through treetops. (I don't know either way.) If we increase HT range, then it's only sensible to increase tank range as well. And I'm not sure we want to do that.

Re: repair rates for aircraft, or all units in general: Perhaps what is needed is for map makers to put many repair and aircraft hexes side by side, in rows or clusters. That would more accurately reflect a fleet of aircraft landing at a base and all getting repaired together, rather than waiting in queue.

I'm open to the idea of attacks hitting more than one hex. I think it doesn't belong in a game where there is no multi-hex range, but since you have multi-hex ranged attacks, it doesn't feel unreasonable to add multi-hex areas of effect. This would help us reflect reality more: carpets of infantry should be highly vulnerable to carpet bombing. On the other hand, we could also argue that a weewar unit is a squad of several subunits, and hence you are carpet bombing several subunits.

Of course this all brings to mind what I've mentioned in the past: Having three planes of unit occupancy. But perhaps that's too much to digest in these early stages of engine tweaking.

peter777, Super-King: I raised a ruckus a long time ago about the ludicrousness of sub blockage. Nary a flinch from the powers that be up to this point. Let's keep our hands in prayer, fingers crossed, or raindance boots on, and hope for the best. In fact, that very issue played a significant part in my boycotting up to now.

About subs - I played a game yesterday where my opponent surrounded my sub with speedboats and hovers and I could not move my sub despite there being space behind the blockers within range. Speedboats do not have ZOC on subs, yet if there is no path, they cannot move. Subs should be able to go "under" the blockers to an open spot and not be hindered by the fact that the path to get to that spot is blocked. Same thing with a channel or narrow river that is blocked by a speedboat or hover. Sure, the blocking units can be destroyed but it is a pain and takes away from the power of subs.

Also, changing range of subs to 2 would help reduce the ability of a player to surround their battleships with blocker units since another, likely larger layer of blockers would be needed.

Hence my suggestion to move to 3 planes of occupancy.

That would let you have a bomber flying over a destroyer which was sailing over a submarine.

@ peter: Dont think speedboats and HCs blocking subs is a big deal, especially when BBs are involved.

What bugs me a lot more is that subs cant pass through/block enemy harbours. Now THAT is annoying, especially on mikes river maze

Countermeasure for infantry flooding? Isn't that what assault artillery is for?

I like the idea of damaging more than one unit, but for future units, not existing ones... well except for LA asits useless, so might as well replace it.

@Pistos: Dude, you are seeing this game way to realistically. I dont disagree with most of what you are saying, but the reasoning I cant get on board with. Infantry don't shoot planes with rifles in real life, sure, but this is not a combat simulation, its a wee game Why DD are better than BB against subs? not cause it makes sense, but cause we need one unit that is strong against subs and this cant be the BB as the subs are only there to kill those.

I also think the idea of several planes of occupancy would unnecessarily make the game overly complex.

Streen: I'm not saying to blindly chase realism as a holy grail.  But I would find it more satisfying if things were more realistic yet stayed playable.  It's a basic factor of usability: All other things being equal, you should aim to go with what the user is familiar with

I suggested in the past that you could just rename some of the units so that you don't get these cacophonical cognitive dissonances.

3 planes of occupancy would increase complexity, agreed, but I'm uncertain as to whether it would make it overlycomplex.  Everything would operate the same, except you would change ranges to include (or not include) 0.  Such as infantry attacking 0-1, bombers attacking 0-2, etc.  But you would gain some benefits like: removing senseless unit blockage, bombing and depth charging behaving more sensibly.

Anyway, now is probably not the time to introduce multiple planes, but silly unit blockages need to go, and sooner rather than later.  A quicker fix is to introduce leapfrogging where appropriate, such air over non-air, subs under non-subs, etc

Woohoo, ye olde realism debate! Those of us who love Eurogames know that the basic factor of usability is actually "all other things are never, ever equal".

Giving jets a range of five makes them uncatchable and therefore too powerfull, according to me.

Destroyers are much more flexible in movement and persuing and therefore stronger against subs then the heavy battleship. But I also agree with Streen that it is more about playability why you should want them to be stronger against subs then BB.

Mapdesigners already can effect the extend to how many and how many expensive units can be bought, by setting the income and the amount of bases on a map. That doesn't need to change to me.

Assault Art. is not that effective against infantry. For that 450 you can buy 6 infantry, which take 12 shots to wipe them all out. It only takes 3 or 4 shots from infantry to kill the AsA. Actually a HT is good against infantry, since it can hardly be harmed by it. But then again: you can buy 8 infantry for 1 HT. Gee, before the HT has killed all those 8... that would take 16 turns! So meanwhile the HT gets killed by some artillery in the game.

I like subs to have range cause then they will be like Assault Artillery. AssAs are good against DFA's. So why not have a sea base unit like that.

As for the harbor problem on my map. The developers rolled out a temporary solution to something call "Sub Squatting".  Basically first turn players could park a sub on an opponents base, and the opponent could not targeted unless he/she had destroyers. The devs figured if they just prevent large ships (sub, destroyer, battleship) from squatting on opponents bases it would fix the issue, but it just created newer issues. Now All you need to do is capture a harbor and you could get  a free ZOC building. I still think the base way to fix the original problem "Sub Squatting" is to make
subs  vulnerable to attacks by ground based units while docked in a harbor, but i believe this was not easy to implement at the time.

Dont think speedboats and HCs blocking subs is a big deal, especially when BBs are involved.

Battleships are kinda expensive... and if you only have subs in one particular area then they can be corralled by a wall of speedboats. Even if realism isn't something to aim for, when does it ever make sense for a speedboat to get in the way of a submarine? (Or a destroyer/battleship for that matter, but with those you can justify it by their greater power and the fact that destroyers are intended to counter subs)

Since subs can't attack speedboats, they have no way to get past them on their own. Simple as that, needs fixing.

peter777: They're catchable if AA-capable units exert ZOC on them.

Re: DDs: I agree about playability, and speed being the strengths of dests.

And yes, realism or not, sub blockage is ridiculous.

Almost change of topic, but something that occurred to me just now while playing; an idea that came to me, and I believe that I should be called a genius for this one, but then, why hasn't anyone else come up with it? Ok, here goes: Why dont we change BBs so that they have a range of 2-5? Then anything getting close enough will be a hassle to them. This would be a serious weakness, ready to be exploited

I could go for playtesting that.  But I still stand by my desire to get DDs and BBs to depthcharge subs at range 1.

2-5 range is useless. It is not a big enough nerf. I've simulated this on several test games. Basically it works for DFA because DFA's can not fire on the same turn they move. All a battleship will need to do is  move and it can still double fire. As for subs. a battleship will just do 0 damage to a sub instead of the 1-2 it does now. All a range of 2-5 will do is prevent me from attacking subs with my battleships.

Whoops, forgot about the move and fire.  Brilliant point, madmike.

i think 2-5 range makes a big difference in defending against attacks especially from bombers , which wouldn't take damage from the battleships.

Thank everybody for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I've got noted down some points and I am looking forward to discussing things futher. With very little time right now let me say: The problem concerning subs being blockt by cheap units will most likely not be included into the first round of balancing. Even though having subs move underneath other units is a very appealing idea.

I totally agree with you all that the upcoming balancing will have to be done carefully so that we dont go to far and end up in a reversed situation (units that were previously to strong end up being too weak etc.) There will of course be an extended testing phase for all of this and the testing will surely include more then one round of tweaking.

Lets assume that we are going to balance things in a way that they work better together. Even though there will still be some things to work on (like the blocked sub) the most units will interact better. Yet still there would be no solution for the problem, that a Battleship (or even a Destroyers) can lay waste to land units. Lets say someone plays on a map without airfields. Is there any valid strategy to keep ships off your cost? I dont see any - if you do, please let me know. The coast cannon would be a solution to this.

Chances are good that we follow your advice and do not introduce the other two types of towers.

A coast cannon or other unit that is like anti-sea with range sounds good. But I think naval units should be best countered by naval units. That's just me though.

Another idea is you could also give a DFA (and/or other artillery) stronger attack against ships - right now one hit of a Battleship vs DFA leaves the DFA with 0 or 1 and Battleship with 6 or 7. Destroyer attacking DFA leaves DFA with 2 or 3 and Destroyer with 4 or 5.

DFA's lose more points because I believe they actually get hit twice by battleship. Basically what spade said. If we could bumped the attack of DFA and H.arts by 3, this should help with the ability of land units to do some considerable damage to BS or other large naval ships.

I hope I do not confuse people with a simple idea on how I interpret  balance.

2 Assault artilleries($900) can destroy 1 DFA($1200)

2 Light Artilleries($800) can destroy 1 H.art($600)

2 subs($2400) can destroy 1 battleship($2000)

2 DFAs($2400) can not destroy 1 battleship($2000) - It would be nice to see 2 DFA's destroy a battleship.

At last, I do not know if this is enough since DFA's can not shoot if they move.

Actually, when a battleship fires on a DFA, it only takes one shot to reduce the DFA to 0 or 1. (I did this two days ago and then lamented the fact that I didn't fire at a capturing trooper before firing at the DFA rather than after.)

Sea units are of no use at all, since they cannot capture bases. So the only use of them is because the (slow) BB can effect landunits (a lot). If two DFA's can kill a BB, then the whole use of BBs becomes invalid and with it all other sea-units. The problem with BBs is that the countermeasures don't work that well. Which means: subs are blocked by speedboats, etc.
If somebody has sea-dominance, then it would be nice if air-raids can do the trick. If there is no air, then the last trick should be to kill it with DFA's, but it should really cost you, like now.
Maybe a coastcanon would be nice, especially because it is fixed and cannot move or be used against other units. But as with every other (strong) unit, it should be vulnerable somehow. For instance infantry should be able to dismantle it quickly or so.

Bert: right now you can use this strategy: buy lots of speedboats to protect your fleet against subs. Encircle any boat/sub with speedboats and attack it with the right units. As long as you have more BBs then the enemy, so he cannot directly kill your BBs with his own BBs you can win this. Of course you will lose a lot of speedboats, but at a cost of 200. Every sub or DD that is killed in this way without one being killed yourself is worth 6 speedboats.
Speedboat and hover-blocking is much higher on my wishlist then landunits being able to counter BBs. The point is that the supposed countermeasure against BBs (named subs) is not working well enough.

Furthermore I want to say this: all the critic over here might give the impression that weewar is not functioning right. Well... even despite the flaws, it is just a GREAT game. I bought an Xbox a couple of month ago, with the greatest graphical games etcetera... but nothing has been as addictive as weewar!! I haven't even touched the Xbox since I discovered weewar. I just love it and that will stay so for a while for sure. So whatever is being said over here: keep up the good work and Hooray for the developers...

bert: Thanks for responding.  I look forward to the first wave of changes.  But let me reiterate what I've said in the past: Unit balancing is supposed to take a very long time.  As I said, Wesnoth is STILL balancing units, and they've been in development for years.  I expect that it'll be drastic at the start, but it should taper off -- but it will still take many iterations.  If you do fewer than 5 iterations (each lasting, oh, a month, at least), I would quite disapprove. 

And I thought the solution re: laying waste to inland units was to reduce effectiveness (read: damage) against inland units?  I think I agree with spadequack that I'd like to see naval units focused on naval battle, with only weak to moderate strength against air and land.

But let's see how the first wave of changes plays out for a while.  I feel rather uncertain at this point what the outcome will be, even know ahead of time the exact changes.

Pistos: what is the use of a sea-force if they have little effect on land and air units? The only use would then be to provide safe travel over water for hovercrafts?! You cannot do anything with a seaforce. The only interesting thing about sea dominance is that the BB can lay waste on land units.

peter777: I agree, so I don't think they should be weakened beyond usefulness.  By no means should we have useless units in the game.  Perhaps the problem is range?  In this area, I am rather uncertain, so I'd like to just get my hands dirty with some real playtesting with tweaked stats, and run through several iterations and see what we come up with.

I dont think naval superiority over land units is a big problem. Their range is limited and land units can always hide more inland. If not, blame the mapbuilder. The usefullness to lay waste to land units is balanced by the uselessness of BBs after the fight turns inland. on this mapo here: http://battleground3.weewar.com/game/62090/jRYtCvdgBoFf I got 3 BBs that dont do nothing but look good for quite a while now (i know its not the best example of a balanced map)

i'm a little dense.  can someone explain to me why some people refer to battleships as "BB" ?  where's the other b?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_classification_symbol

BB is used for modern battleships in the U.S. Navy

ah, thanks

I was wondering the very same thing a few months back. same goes for DD

I am actually considering adding a disambiguation of the word Battleship on wikipedia, pointing to a description of a weewar Batleship

Im lazy and didn't make an effort to read the whole topic but for 4 I would think you can use the light art's to get a boost when on a fortress or even imbead into a fortress to make the firepower better? or maybe make it able to attack at half power if you move? since it's a "Light" artillary I would say it can attack after moving but at less power and be more vulnerable the next turn.

Pistos - DD's are considered to be more "anti-sub" IRL from the U.S. Navy's deployment of the "AEGIS" platform which, among other things, provided advanced sub-surface tracking abilities.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_combat_system).

hehe, there's an Aegis cruiser in Red Alert 2.

Useless against subs... absolutely kickass at taking out air units though.

(There's a separate anti-sub unit, which happens to be called a destroyer)

dbthaw: Thanks.

bert: Any ETA on these spec changes?

rephrase if you don't mind that i do pistos: is there any ETA on when the test server will be up and running to test these spec changes? 

So, what's the scoop with unit spec adjustment iterations?  This thread raised hopes, I tell you!  But it's now been a month since the last post in this thread. 

I'm currently working on this.

Sweet.